


And I'm So Sorry

by hiei700



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blood, Lotor's here but he isn't important, M/M, kinda angsty i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 06:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11202075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiei700/pseuds/hiei700
Summary: Humans have such fragile minds—bending at the slightest shift in the breeze like the wings of a poorly constructed paper plane.





	And I'm So Sorry

**Author's Note:**

> Not completely happy with how this came out, but I hope you still enjoy!
> 
> -
> 
> Edit: I realized something I said was a bit crass, so I tweaked it.

The first thing he notices is his arm.  It's bare—lightly tanned skin staring up at him.  His hand—covered by a fingerless glove.  He could move it, but it was all he could focus on.  No spandex.  No armor.  No metallic smell of his helmet.  Reality spins into him like a corkscrew maneuver he couldn't quite land.

 

Keith is on solid ground—familiar ground.  Keith is on Earth.

 

The tall apartment buildings, streets lined with cars all parked and powered off, an eerie silence hanging over distant skyscrapers.

 

How was he here?  His boots—the tread looking as good as new when he lifted them—sat on dirty asphalt.  A few steps brought him to a weed-encroached brick sidewalk.  A glance up grounded him amongst tall, wealthy houses; maybe a section of the city where wealthy doctors lived.  This was... this definitely had to be a city.

 

He curls his hands once, twice—he's definitely in his body.  The nail of his index finger was chipped. He remembers that because Lance had noticed it before-

 

Before they left.

 

Violet eyes scrambled to catch a glimpse of his teammate.  They weren't headed to Earth.  They were headed to a Galran ship.  Why were they here?  Why couldn't he feel relief in being on his home planet?

 

"Lance?  Lance!"  His voice echoed—like the last dying waves of light from an old flashlight hitting a concrete wall.

 

"Lance!"  His head was a scramble of voices and questions and he didn't know what to do.  Shiro wasn't here, didn't come with them because... because...

 

He couldn't remember.  Why couldn't he remember?  If he was here-

 

"Lance!"  Desperate to try anything, to spit names that the vacuum of this ghostly Earth would mercilessly eat, Keith is surprised to find his focus suddenly turn to one single house.

 

Tall and cream with a deck—maybe a double lot.  He can't make out the back, but maybe there's a pool there.  He almost knows there's a pool there—a basketball court and a shed and a garage.  But he can't see it.  Keith can only see the front porch and the way the landscaping in his front lawn...

 

"His"?

 

The.  The front lawn.  It was overgrown.

 

He didn't remember moving at all, but his knuckles tapped the stark wine-colored door, feet digging into crunching leaves underneath.  Lance would kill him if he found out Keith had let the autumn eat their home like this.

 

Wait.

 

No.

 

He opens his mouth, as if to vocally remind himself that he lost his head, but his voice turns to a vapor in his throat.

 

The wine door is opened, and behind it stands an emaciated man.  The beautiful smooth skin and sapphire eyes—where were they now?  All Keith could see was a ghostly pallor; it matched the city, matched his confused, but would never match Lance's vivacious personality.

 

This was Lance, and even without recognizing him right away, Keith knew it before he even knocked.

 

"K-Keith?"  The man stumbled in the doorway, hand desperately resting on the frame.  Sunken-in eyes studied him.  He couldn't remember if he was breathing or not.

 

"Keith..." and then it started.  The crying; Lance was crying.  Ugly and hard and all at once—he reached out for his teammate, and Keith-

 

Keith backed away.  Eyes wide in horror, he took a step back.  His arms felt empty and heavy all at once as they fell uselessly at his sides.  Blood seeped throughout the white of Lance's eyes, making him seem alien.  His skin was sheathing off in layers like a kicked pile of the dead leaves beneath him.  Filth covered his face.  Keith was... he was repulsed.  And what a disgusting feeling—being so repelled by someone he loved.  He-

 

He loved Lance.  Loved the skinny figure looking all too fragile and broken as it cried in the black doorway to their house.  Betrayal was there, Keith heard it in every sob, but there was also an unsettling degree of acceptance.

 

"Y-You... you're here—you came back."  Lance's lips were beyond chapped.  They cracked and bled, teeth the dullest Keith had ever seen.  But this person who was Lance continued to speak with a mouth that wasn't Lance's.  "You came back for me.  You..." the broken laugh that followed brought Keith closer, pity and bewilderment and desperation all wrapped into one package as he tried to assess the situation.

 

"Lance... You're alive still," what a shitty thing to say.  To blurt out to his dying husband.

 

Husband?  Husband?  He looked down; there was a ring on his left hand.  On Lance's too.

 

They were husbands.

 

"Guess so."  A cough, more than a scoff.  Tears rolled down his cheeks in streams, but instead of stepping closer, Lance retreated into the shadow of his foyer.  He smelled of disease—of a cold that built in the back of the throat without seeing the pristine life of a doctor's office.  He didn't want to force Keith into his mess like he always did.

 

"Lance," even spoken with uncertainty, it still brought forward a little spark to his partner's weak eyes.

 

"Yeah, babe?"  He told Lance not to call him that, and yet-

 

Wait, wait.  No, he- he... that's not the point here.

 

"What's... what's going on?"

 

"Attention citizens:" his gaze flew up, the distant announcement sounding far too clearly in the silence of the decaying city.  A helicopter, maybe.  Or a ship.  Maybe one that could take them home. Because this wasn't their home, even if it was their house.  Their home was the Castle.  Why did they ever leave?

 

"It is in your best interest to stay indoors.  Do not panic.  The 24 curfew is in place for your own protection."  Lance seemed to consider the only voice within a thousand miles to be mere background noise, if his unchanging expression was anything to go by.  He used the back of his hand to wipe at globs building in his blood-shot eyes, letting the sky speak for him.

 

"The government will bring foodstuffs fresh tomorrow morning."  The second announcement brought Keith to look at Lance's body again.  His shirt was far too large; he swam in his jacket.  His sweatpants were only holding because of the drawstring.

 

"Please remember to clearly designate with colored cloths the state of your household.  Display a red cloth if there is an infected person in the house.  Agents will transport them to a nearby treatment facility."  Violet eyes reflexively caught onto the shape of his jacket just as he caught it, looking up to the top of the door from which it fell.  Lance was sick.  Lance had used his red jacket to signify as much.  Lance-

 

"If there is a deceased family member, please display a black cloth.  We will come to retrieve them shortly.  That is all." His eyes caught something absolutely ghastly.  A shirt of his—faded a dark grey from years in the wash, but distinctly black against the wine door.

 

"Lance..."

 

"Y'know, I've been getting along pretty well.  I almost didn't believe that the whole coughing up blood thing really meant shit."  Violet eyes widened, fists clutched the red material.  It was cold.  It was too cold.  His finger tips would turn blue if Lance cried anymore.

 

"They say that hallucinations end it all, though.  Guess I have... what... a few hours now?  Ain't gonna be pretty either."  He stops speaking.  He coughs.

 

Lance hacks into his hand, and when he pulls away, Keith sees droplets of blood like shreds of his jacket drip and flutter off to silent grounds.

 

"Least I got to hallucinate the only thing in life I got right."  Lance tries to smile, but he's coughing again, slipping to his knees along the doorframe and more and more of Keith's coat is getting chopped up in his lungs and sent to the wind like some damn ceremonial roses on their wedding.

 

"Lance!  What-  what are you saying?"  He didn't realize it until now, but he's choking too—on his own words and on the way his bottom lip won't stop curling and quivering.  He kneels, without the ring this time, and reaches out to shift some soft hair from Lance's once-soft cheeks.

 

"You're... you're a hallucination.  You're... you're dead, Keith."  A decorative stone that should be circling the garden pulls at his gut,  his eyes lose focus, the cream bricks of the walkway blending into a bitingly snowy ferocity too cold for his searing tears.

 

"I-I'm not.  I'm /here,/ Lance.  I'm here with you."  He takes the small, bony shoulders into his hands and all but begs for a response.  Lance laughs, but his eyes are still puffy from the tears leaking out. The way the wrinkles build around his eyes makes it obvious how relieved he was for the physical contact.

 

"Hey, now.  If you touch me, you'll get it too."  He slides his eyes closed, and for a moment his breathing stops and Keith thinks he's lost him, fuck he's lost him, but then, "that's... that's how I got it from you.  You were so mad..." weakly, the heel of Lance's hands rub into his eye sockets, and he's staring into Keith's once more.

 

"That's why I gave you the bed and slept on the couch since..." he looked down at his lap, mind unable to string together so much in such a weakened state.  "Hell, they tell you they'll come and bury your loved ones, but that's a bunch of shit.  You've been there a few days at least..."

 

"Lance!  I'm here, please-"

 

"I know," somehow they're holding hands, and Lance's eyes are only a little more tired than they were the first time they kissed.  "I appreciate it.  I couldn't bare the thought of being all alone for this."

 

Keith wants to mention Allura and Coran and their genius species—maybe the Alteans had a remedy.  They just needed the ship.  They just needed to be home, and then-

 

"I still made you breakfast everyday.  You couldn't cook even when you were still up and walking, so you definitely needed help when you were just..." he stood; they both did.

 

"Come in; I want you to eat."

 

* * *

 

"I don't understand."  Voice smooth, not quite frigid.  Eyes following a pale figure dance around an empty room.  Chipped armor dropped little bits onto the metal flooring.  Still-bleeding wounds occasionally dripped behind the subject as he walked.

 

"What the hell don't you get, you sick bastard?"  Lance's temper flared, teeth ready to rip out Lotor's throat if he had to. So much for a successful mission.  Now they had to deal with this sadistic asshole.

 

"All you've been saying about the Red Paladin since you were captured has been how much he irked you... and yet, his worst fear appears to be losing you."  Golden eyes stared past clear glass in a morbid curiosity.  The prince gazed on in the comfort of a seat, but Lance struggled to free his hands and feet from the chains branching from the floor.

 

"Well yeah!  We're teammates!  Once we lost each other our mission was over!"  He stood again, not quite enough room to reach Lotor, but close enough to the damn control panel to ram his skinny body into it again.  He had to get Keith out of there.

 

"You're not listening, Earth Prince.  This room was designed to build on one's greatest desires to generate dark fears."  Lance panted from the floor, blood pounding in his ears and sinking through the black spandex of his suit where his continuous exertion against the Galra tech had torn open wounds. He fuzzily remembered Keith mentioned something like that with the Blade guys.  Couldn't he just catch a break?

 

"He's not worried about the mission.  I bet he can't even remember it."  The chamber's floor was bare, but when Lance finally climbed up again, he saw just how convinced Keith was that he was surrounded by a real environment.  Blue eyes widened, and the tears that had been building up in pain and in fear began to overflow.

 

"Do you want to hear?"  Lance only bit his lip, but that was a good enough response for the prince.

 

* * *

 

"Lance, please, I don't need to eat.  I need to protect you."

 

"Just listen to me for once, okay, Mullet?"  affectionately, the bony version of his husband lifted a bite into his mouth.  A fork shook slightly before him, a trembling hand cupped under it to catch whatever was spilled.  Pancakes.  He could taste it, feel it on his tongue and down his swollen throat. He nearly choked, reaching up to cup his neck just as Lance offered another piece.  His companion was crestfallen, seeing all the hard work he had busied himself with sift between skinny, diseased fingers.

 

"That's just how you started last time.  Shiro too."  Now he was scraping a fork absentmindedly through a collection of syrup building up on the side of the pancakes.

 

"Sh-Shiro?  Where's Shiro?  He's here?"  The sound of metal on porcelain had every hair on the back of his neck on end.  He felt his teeth grinding without even making contact—his bones buzzing without moving.

 

"Unless you brought a few friends with you to let me hallucinate, no.  Just you and me now.  Just... just me."

 

"Where... you... can't be serious?  Shiro's..."

 

"Choked on some blood in his sleep.  None of us even got to say goodbye."  The utensil scrapping the plate coupled with Lance's sad tale brought trembling fingers to dig into gloved palms, Keith's knee bobbing along to the static in his bloodstream.

 

"Matt... well, y'know.  He was already gone after that, since it was right after Pidge.   Hunk lasted a bit longer.  Not as long as you, though."

 

"And you're the only one left?"

 

"Until you decided to grant me a ghostly visit, yeah."  Lance leaned back in his chair, but the moment of mourning calm was broken by a lurch forward and a fit of coughing.

 

"No, no... Lance... that's not what happened.  You... you're on a mission with me, a-and Shiro, he's still alive.  So is Hunk and Pidge."  Delicate shoulders shook ferociously, wine spilling from between dark fingers to pool all over the hardwood floors.

 

"W-we're all with Allura and Coran!  W-we're okay, Lance!  We're in the Castle Ship, and we're going to save the universe, so... so... Snap out of it!"  He was yelling only because he was begging, and the tears prickling at his husband's eyes showed that he knew.

 

"You're... really gettin' my hopes up.  Being dead sounds even better than normal."

 

" _Lance_!"  A voice akin to a dying animal, Keith clutched the two thin shoulders and shook the man once, Lance's head lolling back before slowly lifting again.

 

"It's... Not gonna be pretty.  I understand if you want to leave."

 

"What... What do you-"

 

"I've watched it so many times, Keith.  I was so... so  _scared_  of it before.  Now I just want it over with."  Empty eyes accessorized an empty smile, and Lance stared at him with tears puddling onto his shirt.

 

"You've always been an ugly crier.  C'mon, it's my turn," warm thumbs brushed his cheeks, and Keith realized he was the one spilling tears all over his poor husband.  "If... you want to stay around for me hacking my lungs out, bleeding from every bodily orifice, and puking myself to death, go ahead. They told me that when I cry blood is when everything starts to get really bad."

 

"I-If that's bad, then what's this?"  His heart ached along with his messy mind.

 

"This is just stage two, so far, so it's nothing compared to stage three."

 

"Are there just three?"

 

"Unless you count being dead, yeah."

 

"Lance..."  unlike before, the man's eyes became desperate, and he gripped the front of Keith's shirt. Another fit of coughing took him over, only this time he buried his head in Keith's chest.

 

There was no way this could be real—no way.  Lance wasn't sick; Keith knew he wasn't sick.  If he could just remember what happened between then and the mission... what happened during the mission-

 

"Keith... Keith please stay.  Please.  I... I don't want to do this, but I really don't want to do this alone. I know you're not real.  I know you can't help, but please..." suddenly, it felt too real to think about anything else.

 

* * *

 

"Please!  Please!  You have to get him out of there!"  Tears slid down the control board, slipping into the grooves around buttons and dripping onto the floor.  Lance was beyond pride—begging the prince to have mercy on Keith.  He couldn't bow yet, not with the way Keith was talking to himself, not with the way he could hurt himself any minute.

 

"I can't; if he exits mid-delusion, his hallucinations could carry over."  Long nails skipped across a holographic screen.  Lotor couldn't place his reasoning, but he wanted this to stop as well.  Certainly half of it had to do with Lance's crying being so damn annoying.  Another large portion of it was his distaste for Haggar and therefore all forms of torture she orders.  He'd hate to think some of the regret stemmed from empathy.

 

"I don't care; I'll die in his arms a thousand times over if it makes him wake up!"

 

"Earthling!"  In a loss of his composure, the prince accidentally ripped a knob from the machine, absentmindedly chucking it at the sobbing mess slumped onto the controls.  "I cannot simply take him out!  Reality and this delusion will collide.  It's the most immersive technology we possess." Slight rage now accompanied his pointed taps.  What a pain.

 

"Th-then put me in!  I can talk him out.  I'll-"

 

"You'll lose your mind.  You'll either follow his delusions or come up with your own."  Focus. Focus.  An index finger traced a line down his screen, and after a loading sequence, he leans back in his chair with a sigh.

 

"Wh-what did you-"

 

"Release," in an instance, the cuffs popped open around Lance's wrists and ankles.  He was free. Lotor was massaging his temples.  "I increased the perceived control the Red Paladin has over the situation.  Haggar has some disgusting forms of torture; I'll give her that."

 

"W-what does..." aching legs brought him back up to a poor-form standing position.  They bowed together at the knees, and it took several pushes back up to fight gravity completely.

 

"His fears seem to be losing you, losing this 'Shiro' man, and losing his newly-found family.  I can't adjust them because of how they relate directly to his greatest desires, but there is also an element of having no control over an outcome.  Before, he was convinced he'd have to watch you die slowly and painfully.  Now..."

 

"Now?"  Wide eyes locked onto Lotor, shaking hands holding Lance up with the control panel as a rock.

 

"Now he can control how that happens."

 

* * *

 

"I just wish we would have had more time together, y'know?  Visited my family more... finally adopted that kid we always wanted."

 

" _You_ always wanted.  I'd make an awful dad," Keith chuckles, sitting beside Lance on the couch.  A black hole stared at them from the television screen as they spoke.

 

"We've been over this," Lance laughs, eyes closing mirthfully as a thumb ran over the back of Keith's hand.  "You'd make an awesome dad.  I'm telling you.  I see the way you look at the kid Hunk fosters."

 

"Sh-shut up!"  Scarlet had flushed over his cheeks, matching the crimson trailing down Lance's own.

 

"But it's so cute!  It's like-" he stops to cough, and Keith wonders why their house doesn't just cave in with how badly he's shaking, "it's... it's like you're watching a puppy.  You're always so gentle when we visit too."  He couldn't fight anything Lance said.  Logic would tell him he's still spinning through space, battling purple aliens and talking to princesses from extinct races.  Lance was far more concrete—told him that he was right here in his arms.

 

"Still... I don't have much to go off of."

 

"All first time parents suck, I'm telling ya.  My oldest sister never stops complaining about how mom and dad forgot her at the store about ten times."

 

"I think you've mentioned-" but Lance was doubling over, a terrible guttural sound lurching from his chest.  His lips gave birth to maroon clots of butterflies this time, which shattered when they reached the floor.  Blood leaked from red eyes, blood dropped from cracked red lips.  The Blue Paladin was red, and the Red Paladin was panicking in monochrome.  Keith stood, a hand on Lance's back.  He helped his husband to sit up again, but the man only motioned out to the kitchen.

 

"Can... can you grab me a towel, please?"  He just wanted to stop the pain, not soak up Lance's blood, but there was no way Keith could argue with the pleading tone.  He didn't want to see Lance suffer; Lance didn't deserve that.

 

A blink.

 

Hands suddenly braced the handles of the open towel cabinet, but when Keith gazed in at the assortment of sensibly flowered dish towels, his eyes landed on the familiar luxite blade that had occupied his thoughts for years.

 

He picked it up, weighed it in his hand.

 

It was real.

 

"Keith?"  Lance's eyes were still boring holes into the empty screen; he looked almost serene, except for the pools of blood flowing past brown lashes.

 

Keith slipped the blade into a holster on his hip before dragging over a pastel blue towel.

 

"Sorry sweetie," he muttered, standing by Lance's side as he wiped his face on the plush fabric.  The individual fibers quickly turned brown, then black under Keith's gaze.  He hated how this illness was robbing Lance of his happiness—of his beauty and his smile.

 

"So you can call me sweetie, but I can't call you babe?"  Lance chuckles—the both do—but only Lance's laughter ends with another round of unbearable choking.  With Lance's lips buried into a cloth rather than against his own, Keith grimaced.

 

The vomiting, the bleeding, Keith didn't want to see any of it.  Didn't want to see Lance in anymore pain.  It was all his fault that the man was sick—his fault for dragging a disease home with him and infecting their household.

 

Keith not only sought a shortcut, but a hint of redemption.  A familiar hilt in his hands signaled a way out; the luxite blade stared up at him.  Whispered to him.  Helped him.

 

Keith circled around his teammate.

 

His boyfriend.

 

His lover.

 

His husband.

 

"I think we'll make parenting work," he offers evenly, despite every fucked up signal in his muscles preparing to be unleashed.  A far too-high voltage surging through the strings of muscles underneath his pale flesh.

 

"You think?"  Came the weak reply, blue eyes staring into the same black hole as earlier.  Only gravity, no wind.  Just an empty, weighted room with he and Keith and the television screen floating as celestial bodies.

 

"Yeah.  She'll be really good friends with Hunk's kid."  He tried to laugh, but he couldn't force anything else past his throat.

 

"They can have play dates all the time."  He couldn't breathe.

 

"For sure.  We can make those dumb cake pops you like so much for them."  Couldn't breathe.

 

"Don't act like you don't love them."  Lance sat up a bit straighter now, sapphire eyes still staring at a blank screen.  Ruby droplets still landing on a plush towel.  Keith still couldn't breathe.

 

"I do... I love your cooking."

 

"Yeah?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Even when I burn stuff?"

 

"Even when it sets off the fire alarms."

 

"Keith?"  A soft voice, usually accompanied by the whirr of a ship's, now hanging in the silence.  The Paladin steels himself with a gut full of air he lacked, looking down at the ring on his left hand while slowly raising the knife with his right.

 

"Yeah, Lance?"

 

"I love you."  A punch to the gut, a yank at his soul.  His hand shakes and his bottom lip does that disgusting curl again.  He keeps his voice steady, if not a bit too high.

 

"I love you too."  

 

Breathless.

 

Not even the sound of metal cutting through air interrupted the silence.

 

A dark blade was planted between Lance's shoulder blades.

 

A glance up—too late—gave Keith his mirrored self in the black television.  A slow motion of Lance's accepting smile, eyes that always did know a little too much, saw things he shouldn't have.  A boy who suffered alone as he slumped forward in the dusty, bloodied couch, a knife planted in his back waiting for wings to rip out from either side of itself.  A lion to come save him.  A soft requiem to play.

 

But all Keith sees and all Keith hears is his own hollow crying, tears landing on the hallow flesh of his Lance.  After a while, he manages to make out a word—his lips form his husband's name.  Once. Twice.  Again and again.  He's shaking, and just when he felt the most hopeless, there was a shattering somewhere behind him.  Two hands on his shoulders spinning him around.  His mind a cloud of Lance's voice.

 

But there was no one there.

 

Just a ghost.

 

* * *

 

"You  _fool!_ "  Somehow Lance didn't perish on the trip down, broken glass sliding and glittering all around him like a permanent ripple in dangerous waters.  Lotor was getting ready to jump down after him, but Lance had already hobbled to his sobbing teammate, head dizzy from the fall.

 

"Keith!  Keith, buddy, it's me!   _Keith!_ "

 

"Do not interact with him!  Your mind will only worsen this whole scenario!"  Lance turned to tell the dear prince to leave him the hell alone, but no one was there.  No Lotor, no mind-altering room, not even a bit of broken glass.  Just a desolate field—a dying sky.  No trees.  No water.  No grass.

 

A familiar voice brought his focus forwards again—two wide eyes staring at an emaciated Keith.  A pallor on his cheeks and a midnight blue pall over his shoulders.

 

"Lance..."

 

"K-Keith..."

 

"I..." two hands stood between them—Keith's hands—clutching what looked to be a years-old paper airplane.  The wings were yellowed, the edges torn, and the word "sorry" written all over the children's toy in dried copper paint that reeked of iron.  Maybe at one time, it was blue.

 

"Keith?"  At that, his teammate had crumpled against his chest, breaking out into a loud and desperate cry.  He looked so small, but his chin fit nicely onto Lance's shoulder, two hands still between them clutching the toy plane like an injured bird.

 

"I'm sorry," Keith sobbed, "I'm so, _so_ sorry."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on twitter @KilluKandy if you wanna yell at me


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